‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Creator Bill Watterson Gave His First Interview in Years

Notoriously private Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson has given his first interview in years with Mental Floss magazine, where he talked his painting, his fights with newspapers, and his resistance to adapting the iconic series.

The visual sophistication of Pixar blows me away, but I have zero interest in animating Calvin and Hobbes. If you’ve ever compared a film to a novel it’s based on, you know the novel gets bludgeoned. It’s inevitable, because different media have different strengths and needs, and when you make a movie, the movie’s needs get served. As a comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes works exactly the way I intended it to. There’s no upside for me in adapting it.

The famously anti-merchandising cartoonist also denies that he set fire to a box of Hobbes dolls that a toy company once set him, and can even find one perk to the commercialization of his column.

Owing to spite or just a foul mood, have you ever peeled one of those stupid Calvin stickers off of a pickup truck?I figure that, long after the strip is forgotten, those decals are my ticket to immortality.

More from Watterson can be found in the latest print issue of Mental Floss.

‘Calvin and Hobbes’ Creator Bill Watterson Gave His […]